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Stuyvesant High School in the PressBelow are listed some recent press stories that mention Stuy. From West Side Spirit, October 18, 2001:
Their deepest instinct was to help, even at the expense of their own safety. On Tuesday, September 11, in that first terrible hour as they swarmed the streets after being evacuated, many of them chose to stay near the disaster area, hoping to find something useful to do. Frustrated that they were too young to donate blood, they grabbed passersby and urged them to give, directing them to the nearest hospital. By Thursday, most Manhattan students were back at school. Stuyvesant students were still adrift, their school commandeered for the rescue effort. Determined to use their free time productively, they threw themselves into volunteer work. The football team served food to emergency workers; other students labored at supply stations, organized fundraisers and cheered on workers with homemade signs. Over 400 Stuyvesant students gathered in Washington Square to paint murals of hope. My son and a dozen of his friends converged on the Red Cross and begged for jobs. Told to report for a shift at 6:30 the next morning, they were ecstatic. They burst into my apartment, their faces incandescent with excitement, and set to work baking cookies for the rescue workers. Their world had literally crumbled around them, some of them had witnessed bodies falling from the sky, but for now, they were happy to be together, making their heartfelt contribution to the cause. “This has really made me think about what I want to do with my life,” one boy said. “I might want to go into military intelligence. Join the CIA.” “I never even considered medicine before,” said a girl. “But now I want to help people.” Another girl commented, “You know how Stuyvesant is so competitive? We’re always secretly looking at each other, like how did you do on that test? I don’t think we’ll do that anymore. We’re closer now.” As the evening wore on, their discussions grew more heated and politically divided. They argued about racial profiling, America’s culpability and the limits of a just war. Emotions were still painfully raw; yet somehow, they managed to listen respectfully to each other’s views. At dawn the next morning, they trundled off to the Red Cross. When they learned a van could take a few volunteers to Ground Zero, they insisted on going. Wearing masks and gloves, ignoring the foul air and the ever-present rumors of gas leaks, they spent the next twelve hours carrying supplies and cleaning debris near their school. Some of them refused to leave when their shift was over and stayed throughout the weekend to help. The days to come brought different challenges. With their school in use for the recovery effort, the kids had no idea when their education would resume. “Every day used to be the same,” said one boy. “Classes. Study. Boring. Now if they let us back, I’d be there in a minute.” Eventually, they were assigned to Brooklyn Tech, in split session with its 4,000 students. In a still severely disrupted city, they had to travel to an unfamiliar borough, navigate through a huge unknown school and adjust to a bizarre schedule which had them start school at 1:30 in the afternoon. Yet complaints were scarce. Instead, they seemed grateful to be together. In a dark time, I have found real hope in watching these children. On September 11, they remained calm and courageous, even during the moments of greatest danger. In the horrific aftermath, they dedicated themselves to helping others. And together, they struggled to understand the sudden changes in their world and to respond with moral sensitivity. Our leaders have warned us that a long, dangerous road lies ahead. This generation of children may soon face unspeakable hardships. Some of them - please God, no! - may go to war. None of us dreamed our children would inherit a world so entangled in tragedy. Yet here it is. As I grope to find a way out of the never-ending anxiety, I take some comfort in this: Based on what I’ve seen these past few weeks, I have no doubt that whatever challenges come their way, our children will be ready. From NY Times, October 5, 2001 Levy Tries to Calm Fears About Air Quality Near Ruins Trying to relieve parents' environmental concerns about schools near the World Trade Center, Schools Chancellor Harold O. Levy said yesterday that he would move his office to one of the schools, Stuyvesant High School, when it reopened to students on Tuesday. Mr. Levy's gesture is largely symbolic; he plans to stay only four days and is taking only a secretary with him. He is responding to a growing outcry from parents at seven schools who are worried about air quality and the trucks carrying debris from the disaster site. His effort apparently is not enough to allay fears of parents at at least one of the other shuttered schools, Public School 234, at the corner of Greenwich and Chambers Streets, one block east of Stuyvesant. That school was to reopen around Oct. 15, but so many parents raised objections regarding problems with air quality that the Board of Education decided yesterday to delay the return for at least another month…. The students from P.S. 234 have been doubling and even tripling up in classrooms at P.S. 41, creating what Anna Switzer, the principal of P.S. 234, described as a chaotic environment. Under pressure from parents, the Board of Education promised to reopen P.S. 234 around Oct. 15. But after learning this week that traces of asbestos had been detected in dust samples at nearby Stuyvesant High, many parents changed their minds. After several emotional meetings with parents and teachers this week, Ms. Switzer decided to delay the return. Instead, she said yesterday, the school would move into St. Bernard on Tuesday and stay there for at least a month. "We want to go back to our school more than anything," Ms. Switzer said. "But we can't go back until the adults have confidence that it's a completely safe move." Stuyvesant High, which was used as a staging area for rescue and recovery workers until last week, is being tested for the presence of asbestos and other environmental hazards after an intense cleaning over the last several days. Last month, before the cleaning, tests showed elevated levels of asbestos in dust on surfaces in the school. But air samples taken after the cleaning showed only traces of asbestos, well below the levels deemed dangerous by the federal Environmental Protection Agency…. From NY Times, 25 September 2001: Stuyvesant's own evacuation has come under criticism from parents who say that students were first sent to their homerooms — some of which were on the 10th floor — and then held in the school even as the streets outside were filling with smoke and debris. Once students were told to leave, they were given little instruction on where to go, the parents have complained…. Marilena Christodoulou, president of the Stuyvesant High School Parents' Association, said that the school's phone systems went out almost immediately, and that parents who called the district office were told that students would be held in the school until parents picked them up. "I think it was a mistake to keep children in the school with a fire so close by, and to have some of them go higher in the building," she said. Police officials ordered the school, at Chambers and West Streets, to be evacuated through the north entrance, away from the World Trade Center, at about 10:30 a.m. Ms. Christodoulou said that although the school's principal and his assistants were standing at the door instructing students to stay with their teachers as they headed north on West Street, they were given no destination. W. L. Sawyer, the superintendent for Manhattan high schools, and Mr. Levy said the evacuation was handled appropriately, with students being kept in the building only until the police and F.B.I. officials told them to leave. "Dismissing children into the streets at that time was a decision that had to be taken with the guidance of police," Mr. Levy said. "When it became clear that the school was not as safe as the streets further north," the school was emptied…. Mr. Levy said the city plans to return Stuyvesant High School to the Board of Education's control by Oct. 1. A cleanup team will then ready the building for students, work that could take as long as two weeks, he said. The students are now at Brooklyn Technical High School. From Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2001: Stuyvesant High holds its first classes since the World Trade Center came down across the street, by Geraldine Baum They were silly and apprehensive, frequently thoughtful and even a little obnoxious, but mostly these teenagers showed resilience by reveling in their very adolescence. Nine days ago, all these adult children--with their cell phones, blotchy skin and high IQs--peered through Stuyvesant High School's windows and saw the ugliness at the World Trade Center in a way that could not be captured on television. They saw fireballs roaring from the twin towers; they saw people leaping hand in hand; they smelled the smoke choking the sky above them. The 3,011 students trooped back to temporary classrooms Thursday, determined not to allow a collective horror stand in the way of their collective promise. For almost 100 years, Stuyvesant has drawn from among New York's smartest students. Background, influence and income do not matter. The only criterion for admission is one grinding, 2 1/2-hour entrance exam, and the result has long been a student body that ranks top in the nation. Year after year, Stuyvesant has produced about 70 National Merit Scholars out of a senior class of 700. This strict meritocracy has also produced a range of students from all five New York City boroughs--and around the world. Himanshu Suri, whose Indian mother sells life insurance, lives in Flushing, Queens; Irene Chu, whose parents run a laundry, lives in Green Point, Brooklyn; Roman Trimba, a Russian immigrant whose father is a doctor, lives in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. "The fact we haven't had school, you know, classes, well, I didn't like that," said Suri, the student union vice president. "All we could do was sit around and watch the same disturbing images on TV that we saw that day with our own eyes." In those moments, they witnessed a collision of two global strands: One is the flow of people who come to the United States for its values and way of life. The other is a flow of violence directed at America--also for its values and way of life. But Trimba and his friends, in their T-shirts, baggy pants and sneakers, were holding fast to their innocence Thursday, as they reviewed their class schedules and tried to figure out how they would function without the textbooks still in their lockers. They would not concede that anything in their lives had really changed. They would not concede that this was "any big deal." Instead, they talked about classes shortened from 40 minutes to 26 minutes for the next two weeks while they share Brooklyn Technical School's building, near downtown Brooklyn, with its 4,000 students. They'll split shifts, with the Tech kids going 7:15 a.m. to 1:47 p.m. and the Stuyvesant kids going from 1 to 6:11 p.m. In the meantime, Stuyvesant's buildings on the Hudson River are being used by rescue workers. Standing in the driving rain, the students joked about who is better, "Stuy students," as they call themselves, or "the Techies." They also made fun of the principal's suggestion that some might want to seek counseling. "Would I go to some counselor knowing that if anyone found out they'd call me a, you know, a whatever?" Trimba, 15, asked his buddies. "Nah," said Kirill Satanofsky, 15, also a child of Russian immigrants. "No way," Albert Levi, 15, said. And then he said something in Russian to the other boys and they all laughed. With his sweet smile, however, Levi was also willing to offer a hint of vulnerability. "It was pretty bad if you think about it," he said, "but we can't think about it now." Chu, a senior, and her friends Lida Shao and Eric Lai were a little more willing to ponder the larger problems of their world and of their city. They said they were struck by how all their earlier concerns--about college application deadlines and senior "pajama day" and senior "cut day"--had been forgotten for a while. "It makes us feel bad caring about little things now," Chu said. "Like Eric didn't get his senior picture taken that day and he had come to school in a suit." "A lot of kids were in suits when we evacuated school," said Lai, who was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans Thursday. Shao, whose father works at the United Nations, said she misses being at their beautiful big school. "It's so spacious and comfy," she said, describing the relatively new Stuyvesant campus with its three gyms, 77 classrooms, 12 science labs, 40,000-volume library and marble hallways that resemble the tony financial buildings in the neighborhood. "There is so much there we love," she said. But then she withdrew her thoughts, as she said, "from the personal" and snapped back "to the big stuff." "I was really glad when I read that the president of China had announced he wanted 'irrefutable evidence' and U.N. backing before we invaded anyone," she said. "It's so weird to be from this liberal school," Chu added, "and this liberal city, and hear kids we know talking in person or online about retaliation and revenge." From NY Times, 21 September 2001: Stuyvesant High School: Doubling Up in a Quest for Ongoing Education, by Abby Goodnough Connie Desarden had just begun letting her daughter, Anjoli, 14, ride the subway alone — and only for the short trip from their East Village home to Stuyvesant High School. But yesterday, in the wake of the World Trade Center attack that closed Stuyvesant indefinitely, Ms. Desarden insisted on escorting Anjoli across the river to Brooklyn Technical High School, which will house Stuyvesant students for the next few weeks or maybe months. "It's scary," said Ms. Desarden, whose daughter was four days into her freshman year at Stuyvesant when the twin towers were attacked and the school's 3,000 students had to flee. "We hardly ever come to Brooklyn. I don't want her to make this trip alone." The Stuyvesant students were among nearly 9,000 children in schools near the World Trade Center who reported to classrooms in more remote and unfamiliar neighborhoods yesterday, sharing space with thousands of students who regularly attend those schools. Nervous parents accompanied them in droves, still shaken by their children's brush with disaster last week and worried about the instruction they would receive in such tight and makeshift quarters.... The Stuyvesant students were at Brooklyn Tech, in Fort Greene, for less than two hours yesterday, getting schedules and pep talks from school administrators in the auditorium. Several remarked that the assembly had had an unusually patriotic tone. "We pledged allegiance to the flag," said Margaret Conway, a junior from Sunset Park, Brooklyn. "That was weird." The relocation plans were hastily conceived, and they were still in flux even as the students showed up for class yesterday. Originally, Brooklyn Tech's 4,700 students were to attend school from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Stuyvesant students were to come from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. But Stuyvesant parents complained that it would be dangerous and educationally unsound to have nearly 8,000 students in the building at once. So at the last minute on Wednesday, Schools Chancellor Harold O. Levy ordered the two schools to operate on completely separate shifts. Brooklyn Tech students will leave the building before the Stuyvesant students arrive at 1:30 p.m. Classes for Stuyvesant students will be shortened to 29 minutes from 40. Classes for Tech students, which also used to be 40 minutes, will be compressed to 37. Although some parents were agonizing yesterday about the shortened schedule — both schools, after all, are considered top-notch and have disproportionate numbers of students bent on attending top-level colleges — the Stuyvesant students had more immediate concerns. JoJo Du, a senior, had heard a rumor that Brooklyn Tech students were threatening to beat up Stuyvesant students. Thomas Pastuszak, a senior from Briarwood, Queens, was lamenting that he would not get home until 7 or 8 p.m. And Stella Brinkevich, a sophomore, was comparing Brooklyn Tech, a fortresslike structure from the 1920's, unfavorably to Stuyvesant, which opened a new, state-of- the-art building in 1992. "It's a pretty bad-looking school compared to Stuy, but what can you do?" Ms. Brinkevich said as security guards herded students inside. "We're pretty thankful that they're taking us in." Despite their many qualms, the Stuyvesant students were ebullient about seeing each other for the first time since the attack, said Jeff Orlowski, a senior. That feeling was echoed among other displaced students around the city, who had been isolated from their classmates and teachers for more than a week after being evacuated from their schools in the terrifying hours after the attack... After dismissal at Brooklyn Tech, Ms. Conway and her friends mingled with some Tech students across the street from the school, each group testing their preconceived notions about the other and nervously attempting to bond. "Stuy kids look down on us and we don't appreciate it," ventured Orlando Vasquez, a senior at Tech. Ms. Conway offered an olive branch of sorts. "The coalitions between our schools really aren't that strong," she admitted. "But I really want to get to know you guys." From NY Daily News, 20 September 2001: Stuyvesant HS Students Heading to B'klyn Tech, by Melissa Grace When Stuyvesant sophomore Priya Prasad arrives for class today for the first time since the twin towers collapsed, she'll come with seared images of terrified hordes racing from the collapsing inferno. Stuyvesant High School on West and Chambers Sts. is being used for relief and rescue mission. "I saw a building fall, there was dust and a lot of people running," said 14-year-old Priya, who was in Spanish class when the first tower came down. "I started crying." Eugene Oh, a 16-year-old student at the elite high school, said he concocted a desperate plot with his friends to escape out a back exit after students were ordered to remain in the building. Paralyzed with fear because Eugene couldn't find his younger brother Mitchell, the students never acted on their plan. "I saw the second explosion. I saw a fireball," said Eugene, a senior. "I was so scared." It's back to school today for Stuyvesant High School's 3,011 students, but it won't be in their gleaming building on Chambers St. They will be sharing space across the Hudson River with their 4,200 longtime academic rivals at Brooklyn Technical High School. After Stuyvesant parents complained about plans to allow overlapping classes, the Board of Education agreed to stagger the school day. That means Tech students will start at 7:15 a.m. and finish by 1 p.m., when Stuyvesant students begin. They will finish at 6 p.m. Stuyvesant students were told to arrive at 11 a.m. Forty-minute classes will be reduced to 30 minutes. Principal Stanley Teitel ordered his students out of the building after the first tower collapsed. He said he didn't move sooner because Secret Service officers had assured him that the towers couldn't fall. After the kids moved out, a contingent of federal officials and rescue workers poured in, turning the school into a triage center. Stuyvesant students will remain in Fort Greene until emergency workers clear out, hopefully by Nov. 1. The two schools, along with Bronx Science, require exams for admission and are considered the jewels of the public school system. Today, the Stuyvesant refugees will be greeted by Teitel and their teachers — and a team of about 20 mental health workers. Before they hit the books, students and teachers will be offered counseling. Drop-in therapy sessions will continue for at least several weeks. Teachers also may choose to invite counselors into their classrooms. "These kids are in shock," said Judy Moore, a clinical social worker whose daughter, Jessica, a Stuyvesant junior, saw people jumping from the towers. Moore is working with the school's five guidance counselors to coordinate counseling sessions and recruiting colleagues to volunteer at the school. Not only are the students traumatized, many, like Priya who lives in the Financial District, haven't been able to return to their homes. Their books and supplies are still in their lockers. Some may have lost loved ones in the collapse. "My first concern is what my students actually saw on Tuesday," Teitel said this week. "That is the top priority." He said he's particularly concerned that students have had little or no counseling since they fled the school. "I'm disturbed, I'm still shocked," said Peter Christodoulou, a senior. "It makes it harder that we are homeless from our school." Nevertheless, the 17-year-old added, "All the students are very proud that our school is being put to good use." From NY Daily News, 18 September 2001: President Bush praised the heroism and pluck yesterday of the teachers and principals who hustled nearly 9,000 children out of schools in the shadow of the World Trade Center — without a single casualty. "You're such a strong example of the best of America," Bush told Schools Chancellor Harold Levy via phone. "Your school system suffered. You picked yourself up, got your students readjusted, resituated, and you are educating them. That's the best we can ask for," Bush said in what he called a brief "thank you" to the city's public schools's staff… Levy vowed to reopen the evacuated schools as quickly as possible, but each school will be on a different timetable…Much of the pressure to reopen has focused on Stuyvesant, one of the city's elite public schools. Reopening it would be a symbol of recovery. Levy said Stuyvesant would be cleaned and reopened in about a month. In the meantime, its 3,000 students will join Brooklyn Technical High School's 4,000 students to create one of the biggest high schools in the nation. Brooklyn Tech students will attend class in the morning, Stuyvesant students in the afternoon… No reopening date has been set for the High School for Economics and Finance or the High School for Leadership and Public Service. The schools, both on Trinity Place, lost part of their roofs to fire. From NY Times, 19 September 2001: Leading all schools [in New York] with semifinalists [in the 47th annual National Merit Scholarship Program] was Stuyvesant High School, with 88 students. It was followed by Hunter College High School, with 60 students. Among private schools, the competition was much closer: 20 students each from the Dalton School and the Trinity School, 19 from Horace Mann and 18 each from Brearley and Regis High School. From NY Times, 19 September 2001: But the crucial moment came that afternoon, when Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Schumer, joined by the two senators from Virginia, met with Mr. Bush in the Oval Office. Mr. Schumer made the pitch for New York, speaking not only of the 20 million square feet of obliterated office space but also of his frantic search for his daughter, Jessica, 16, a student at Stuyvesant High School, where students watched that day as people tumbled from the heights of the World Trade Center. "You need 20 extra billion for New York?" the president asked. "Yes," Mr. Schumer said. "You've got it," the president replied, without hesitation, according to Mr. Schumer and Mrs. Clinton. From NY Times, 17 September 2001: "My daughter is a little metaphor," Senator Charles E. Schumer said yesterday. "She's been going to this beautiful school, Stuyvesant. Everything's been great." But the high school, not far from the site of the suicide attacks, is now part of the rescue effort, and its students have to commute to Brooklyn Technical High School. "She's not sure where her records are, she's not sure of where anything is right now," Mr. Schumer said. From NY Post, 17 September 2001: Nina Townsend is a 17-year-old senior at Stuyvesant HS, just blocks from the World Trade Center. Here she tells Post reporter Carl Campanile of her tumultuous week. I was in history class on the third floor when the first plane hit. We didn't even know what it was. It could have been a car backfiring. Car alarms were going off. My history teacher kept teaching. A student who came late to class walked in and said, "You won't believe this. A plane hit the World Trade Center." We convinced the teacher to turn on the television news. This side of Stuyvesant doesn't face the towers. Some students called their parents who work in the WTC. I told one of my friends I wanted to hide underneath my desk. I was afraid. I saw another friend in the hallway on the seventh floor and gave her a big hug. Then we heard more explosions. We ran to the windows. We saw people jumping to their deaths. That's when I became hysterical. Students were running out of class. I went to the second floor to be with my friends. The principal made an announcement over the loudspeaker telling everyone to go their home room. Minutes later, we evacuated. Just as we left, the second tower fell. There was confusion. A dust cloud followed us as we walked up the West Side Highway. From there, I walked to a friend's house on Houston Street. Other frightened friends walked over the 59th Street Bridge to Queens… I feel increasingly lucky I have my family and friends. I learned a lot more this week than I would have learned in school. There are great extremes of humanity. From NY Post, 16 September 2001: It takes a lot to stand out among the thousands of volunteers in the downtown area, but one group found a way. At the urging of head coach David Velkas, nearly 50 members of the Stuyvesant H.S. football program - many wearing their jerseys - showed up at Chelsea Piers yesterday to lend a hand. "It's been hard for us, but a lot harder for other people," said David Olesh, a senior who lives in Queens. "We felt like we should be here." The World Trade Center attack has had an enormous impact on people throughout New York City, but since Stuyvesant is located just two blocks away from where the Twin Towers once stood, these players have taken it especially hard. Still, they feel a special obligation to do something. Although the team was turned away at the Piers because they didn't need any more volunteers, they managed to find ways to help. The players carried supplies 15 blocks from there to the Salvation Army on 14th Street. Ten players signed up to go on a boat tonight and will help serve food to rescue workers from Ground Zero. The shift lasts for 12 hours. "I'm excited to do it, so that I can feel like I'm doing something," said Olesh. "It's just good to be back together as a team." The players hadn't seen each other as a group since Tuesday's tragedy. They can't get back to their school. Stuyvesant, one of the three elite city public schools, won't open again until at least November. On Thursday, all 3,200 students will start going to Brooklyn Tech in split sessions. "It just recently hit me that we might not play [football] again," said Nick Oxenhorn, one of several seniors who hopes to play at an Ivy League or Div. III school next year. "It's shocking. Football is a really important part of our lives that's been taken away. Going to a different school, we can adjust to. But not having football will be hard." Yesterday, however, the players focused on helping as they walked around lower Manhattan. "I'm really proud of my team," Velkas said. "I know it was hard for them to come back here after Tuesday, but they want to help. They are the best kids in the city." From NY Times, 16 September 2001: Most centers had no more room for new volunteers yesterday, but a few were put to work at the Red Cross headquarters on Amsterdam Avenue. Shunpei Okochi, 14, a sophomore at Stuyvesant High School, arrived at the Red Cross yesterday with a classmate. Many students at Stuyvesant witnessed the collapse of the towers as they were evacuating their school, which is just north of the trade center. Shunpei and a classmate spent yesterday loading supplies onto Red Cross trucks. "It doesn't feel right to be at home, and just not do anything," said Shunpei, whose school is not expected to reopen for several weeks... From NY Times, 15 September 2001: Stuyvesant High Students to Attend Brooklyn Tech, By Abby Goodnough With parents wondering where students displaced by this week's terror attack would end up, Schools Chancellor Harold O. Levy announced yesterday that Stuyvesant High School's 3,000 students would move across the river to Brooklyn Technical High School and that several thousand other students would be dispersed to schools around Manhattan. The Stuyvesant students will share space in Fort Greene with 4,700 other teenagers and probably attend classes in shifts until their own building just blocks from the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan can be reopened… All of the displaced students will return to class on Thursday, school officials said, because teachers need Monday for planning and all schools will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday for Rosh Hashana. Some of the shuttered schools are indefinitely off limits because they might be structurally unsound from the blast; at least one, Stuyvesant, is being used for the rescue effort. Parents, many of them unable to return to their homes since the disaster struck, reacted to the hastily concocted plans with both relief and trepidation. Although they desperately wanted their children to return to school and re-establish their routines, several expressed concern yesterday that makeshift settings would be crowded and that the upheaval would only heighten the students' stress. Stuyvesant, one of New York City's star public high schools, occupies a complex outfitted with sophisticated science and computer labs that are the pride of its students and parents. Brooklyn Tech, which is also geared toward science and is considered a rival, is also a top-rated school. But parents at both schools wondered yesterday whether the likely split shifts — Brooklyn Tech students are to report to school at 7 a.m. on Thursday, Stuyvesant students at 11 — would put their children at an academic disadvantage, particularly those worried about entering competitive colleges. Gordy Thompson, a co-chairman of Brooklyn Tech's parent association, worried that his son Andrew might not be able to continue all eight of his classes if his school day ended in the early afternoon. "I am concerned, as any parent would be, about the loss of quality of education," Mr. Thompson said, referring to the possibility that classes might be shortened or even eliminated. "But this solution may well prove to have the least impact on the fewest students."… With rescue and cleanup operations still in an early stage yesterday, nobody could predict how long the Lower Manhattan schools would be out of commission. But some parents predicted that even a temporary school assignment, no matter how unfamiliar, would help their children put the events of this week behind them. "It's a place to take my son and let him see his friends and get him back to a routine," said Cathy Claman, a parent at P.S. 89. "It's a place to start." From USA Today, 13 September 2001: Teens and twenty-somethings are often viewed as a pampered, sheltered lot who haven’t witnessed many national tragedies. They don’t remember the Vietnam War or the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. And Pearl Harbor and World War II are the stuff of history textbooks. But that all changed Tuesday, when they lived through one of the bloodiest days in this country’s history. ... Benn Goldschein, 16, who attends New York’s Stuyvesant High School, only a few blocks from the towers, says the terrorist attacks have changed him forever. He was on his way to school when he saw the first plane hit one of the towers. “I felt a big rumble. I could feel it in my heart and in my bones. There was this big, gaping hole in this huge monument.” Later, Benn watched the tower collapse from his classroom window. He says it would take a major catastrophic event to shock him now. “It doesn’t get much worse than this,” he says. “It’s pretty traumatizing to see these things happen right near us. It’s one of the biggest events that’s happened, and it was right outside my window.” … Spike Gronim, 17, a senior at Stuyvesant High, says his worldview has changed, too. “It made me more receptive to foreign action against terrorism. I have much less of a problem with our finding these people and extracting them with military force,” he says. “I don’t want another Vietnam, but I don’t want another day like that, with jets crashing into buildings.”… From Scholastic, online, 13 or 14 September 2001: At the Scene High school senior Amanda Zifchak, 17, was in second period, U.S. History, when she heard a large boom. Because of all the construction around her school, Stuyvesant High School in New York City, she said no one reacted at first. Class went on as usual. "Then, this kid ran into our classroom and said the World Trade Center was on fire," Amanda said. "We turned on the TV and watched as the second plane crashed into the building." When she went to her next class on the 8th floor, Amanda could see the destruction first-hand, since New York’s top science high school sits at the foot of the twin towers in lower Manhattan. "We saw pieces of the building fall into the street, onto the emergency vehicles," she said. "We had to close the windows from the smoke." The school was soon evacuated. Teachers led students to the West Side Highway, where they all began walking north, away from the disaster. The highway was closed down, so the students walked along the highway, stepping out of the way of emergency vehicles as they sped past. Jane Carlin had to walk six miles to her home on the Upper West Side. The 17-year-old high school senior said police were asking kids for their bottled water as students left the building. She didn’t have any, but others dug water bottles out of their backpacks to hand to police officers. "It was really scary," Jane said. "There are a lot of kids in Stuyvesant whose parents work at the World Trade Center. I really feel for them. They don’t know if their parents are safe or not. It was surreal. You would never expect anything like that." As the students started walking up the highway, Amanda stopped and looked back. "I saw smoke and I wondered, 'Where are the twin towers?' Then I realized they were gone. They weren’t there anymore," Amanda said. Marin Kaleya, 17, was standing on Chambers Street with a friend, just outside the school building, when the first plane hit. "We saw the explosion and the school people yelled at us to get in the building," Marin said. "We didn’t understand what was going on. When the first plane hit, it was a surprise. I didn’t think anything of it. Then the second one happened. Then I was sure it was a terrorist attack or something. After that, when the top fell off, our whole building started shaking and we all flipped out. It was a really bad situation." Once the students left the building, cars and rescue vehicles were removed from the area because of a bomb threat. Once the area was cleared, Stuyvesant High School became a center for injured people as they were treated and sent on to hospitals. Amanda said the situation became real to her as she stared at the clouds of black smoke where two 110-story buildings used to stand. "I wondered who was in there, how many people died," Amanda said. From NY Times 13 September 2001: A boy at Stuyvesant High School watched from a window of the school library as people fell or jumped to their deaths from the burning twin towers a few blocks south. A classmate standing next to him crossed himself every time a body catapulted into empty air. And the boy, who is Jewish, wished that he could do something, if only to make such symbolic gestures himself. … Yesterday, parents across the country were struggling to help their children make sense of an act that was beyond the experience of most adults, let alone children. But the children most traumatized were probably those at schools like Public School 234 and Stuyvesant, just a few blocks north of the World Trade Center…. ..., the student at Stuyvesant who watched the bodies fall and wished he could cross himself, went to Central Park with friends yesterday to try to forget. "These children have images in their brains that are pretty intense," his mother, Atina, said. "You wonder, what are the consequences?" From NY Times 12 September 2001: At Stuyvesant High School, just blocks from the trade center, students stood watching from classroom windows or on televisions, but some tried, at least initially, to stick to their usual classroom plans. In one gym class, a ballroom dancing teacher urged students to focus on trying to balance textbooks on their heads — practicing good posture, she said, would help them forget what was going on, despite the sirens blaring outside. But after the second tower collapsed, the principal announced over the public address system that students should report to homeroom and stay away from the windows on the south side of the building. Some students began crying, worried about relatives. Finally, the principal made another announcement a few minutes later ordering students to evacuate from the north side of the building, where they emerged into the street, filled with smoke and shouting. From NY Times 12 September 2001: Then, shortly after 8:30 p.m., an emergency-services official at Stuyvesant High School, where a makeshift hospital had been set up, made an announcement over a bullhorn. Trauma surgeons were being urged to go to the scene; there might be survivors in the rubble. From NY Times 11 September 2001: In the chaos following the destruction of the World Trade Center, people who had escaped from the giant office buildings ran northward, ghostlike in their coatings of white plaster dust, many crying and shouting. Four blocks north, outside Stuyvesant High School, others simply stood and stared. "This is the most horrifying thing I've ever experienced," said Jim Zamparelli, 54, as he stood near the school just after the southern tower collapsed, watching the northern tower burn. |
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